Unlike '08, presidential campaign ads scarce in Pennsylvania

By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

Pennsylvania voters: Do not adjust your television sets. You live in a delegate-rich, politically purple state with a history of hard-fought presidential campaigns just like the one going on right now. So how come your TV isn't overrun with political ads?

By Win McNamee, Getty Images

Mitt Romney greets supporters during a campaign stop in Irwin, Pa., on July 17.

Mitt Romney greets supporters during a campaign stop in Irwin, Pa., on July 17.

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Since May, the presidential candidates have spent little or no money advertising in Pennsylvania, one of the most-contested states of the last presidential election.

In 2008, Barack Obama and John McCain spent $41 million advertising in Pennsylvania during the general election campaign, more than anywhere but Florida. (Obama and Hillary Clinton had already spent $16 million in their primary battle in the state that April.)

This year, from May to the end of July, President Obama spent less than $5 million on ads in Pennsylvania, according to a National Journal analysis, but spent $26 million in Ohio. Republican Mitt Romney has spent $13 million in Ohio, but in Pennsylvania, he hasn't run any ads at all.

If ad wars aren't raging, is Pennsylvania still a battleground? And how could a state be in play when it hasn't voted Republican since 1988? Obama won Pennsylvania by 10 percentage points in 2008; in a Franklin & Marshall College poll released Thursday, he leads Romney by 5 points.

Pennsylvania is "a second-tier target" for the presidential campaigns, says Lara Brown, a political scientist at Villanova University outside Philadelphia. "Pennsylvania kind of suffers from that sense of 'The Republicans haven't won this in so long, why are they competing?' "

They're competing because beyond Obama's big win in 2008, Democratic presidential victories in the state were slim, says pollster Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. Sen. John Kerry won by just 2.5 points in 2004 and Al Gore by 4.2 points in 2000.

"Hope springs eternal," Madonna says.

By Susan Walsh, AP

President Obama speaks in Pittsburgh on July 6.

Romney has visited Pennsylvania four times since primary season, Obama has visited the state twice, and first lady Michelle Obama has made three trips. Independent expenditure groups running ads in the state include conservative Americans for Prosperity, the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future and pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action.

In 2010, the state elected a Republican governor, Tom Corbett, who won with the biggest vote total of any Republican in the state's history. Republicans also won a Senate seat and control of the Legislature.

"That was just off the first two years of President Obama's term," says Billy Pitman, head of the state Republican Victory team. "Two years later, we're heading down the same road, and people are ready to change leadership in the White House."

Democrats have a big advantage in voter registration, but this includes many white working-class Democrats who Jesse Daniel, chairman of the Indiana County GOP, describes as "pro-gun, pro-life; they are for traditional marriage; they are leery of large government."

The state also has a high proportion of senior citizens — important in an election that could focus on the future of Medicare.

Pennsylvania's emergence as a keystone in the presidential race may have to wait until after the political conventions, when Romney is able to start spending money raised for the general election. Then Obama may have to respond in kind.

State Democratic Chairman Jim Burn warns supporters of the president "not to be lulled into any false sense of security by the current level of Republican activity."

"That could change on a dime," Burn says.

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